


where i end and begin

by plain_and_simple_tailor (ectogeo)



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Angst, Epistolary, Established Relationship, Genetic Engineering, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Richard and Amsha Bashir's A+ parenting, Trans Julian Bashir, Transitioning, Transphobia, loosely set in late season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:29:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27596189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ectogeo/pseuds/plain_and_simple_tailor
Summary: During an away mission on the Defiant, Julian gets a painful reminder that many people have families that actually love them. He sends a letter to Garak (his only family that matters), and tells him about the awful ways his parents have tried to control his body throughout his life...I think they just didn’t like the fact that I was being ungrateful about all the so-called “wonderful gifts” they’d given me. They’d already spent so much time and effort on their project of building me into their ideal child, so to hear me say that I couldn’t stand to be in the “perfect” body that they’d risked everything for me to have... well, I’m sure it must have been oh so very difficult for them.
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Comments: 21
Kudos: 58





	where i end and begin

_[encrypted subspace message from U.S.S. Defiant]_

_[stardate sent:_ _49774.4]_

Dear Elim,

Miles was recording goodbye messages for his family again. Just in case we don't, you know, make it. He asked if I ever recorded messages like that for my parents and I just had to laugh at that. It was all I could do not to scream in fury!!! I came right back to my quarters to start writing this. (I guess I don’t really see the point in waiting to send a message to someone I love until after it’s too late.)

You already know most of the pieces of what I’m about to say, but I want to say it all anyway. And... I am not sure you know the full extent of how angry my parents make me, because I really don’t like to talk about it. I don’t enjoy hating them, so I think I tend to minimize my negative feelings toward them when my family or my childhood comes up in conversation so that I can just pretend to be normal. But right now I’m so lonely and worn out, and I miss you, and I’m mad at my parents for making all of my dreams of being part of a normal, loving, supportive family completely impossible.

I was 15 when I told my parents that my name was Julian (they still don’t call me Julian) and that I was going to transition. My parents said I couldn’t, because it was too dangerous. I didn’t understand. That's when they finally decided to tell me about how they had illegally and without my consent changed every single thing about my body when I was 6 years old, and now I couldn’t _risk_ having such a basic medical procedure because the doctors might notice my genetic enhancements.

Of course, they were completely full of shit. They’d flown me halfway across the quadrant for an illegal medical procedure once before, surely they could have brought me back to one of their contacts on Adigeon Prime if they wanted to find a way to both help me and keep their own secret.

I think they just didn’t like the fact that I was being ungrateful about all the so-called _wonderful gifts_ they’d given me. They’d already spent so much time and effort on their project of building me into their ideal child, so to hear me say that I couldn’t stand to be in the _perfect_ body that they’d risked everything for me to have... well, I’m sure it must have been _oh so very difficult_ for them. (In case my tone is unclear, everything I’ve italicized here is meant to be dripping with furious sarcasm.)

I didn’t let them stop me from transitioning, but they certainly slowed me down and made it riskier for me.

Since they wouldn’t let me get surgery, I bound my chest. Did you know that I once dabbled in your profession, my dear? My first sewing experiences were of course repairing Kukalaka, but my next project was making my own binders. (I wish you could have made them for me, they would have turned out much more comfortable and stylish.) I don’t know how much damage was done to my body during those years of trying to flatten my chest myself. Certainly enough to diminish some of the superhuman athletic abilities they wanted for me to have. Sometimes when I had been wearing it too frequently and would notice my breaths were getting shorter, I would feel a sick pleasure in the knowledge that I was making myself less perfect to them and undoing some of their hard work. But that was always a bittersweet and dangerous thought.

My friend Felix helped me bypass the encryption on his prescription for testosterone so I could access the replicator pattern directly. I would bring my datarod with the cracked copy of the pattern to the public replicators to get my own T hypospray doses. I had to research myself how to administer it, how much and how often to take it, what the effects would be, and what to monitor and test and record about myself to try to make sure I’d be safe. My parents were so against my body being scrutinized in any more detail than a yearly tricorder scan could provide that I ended up becoming my own doctor in order to heal myself—I’m well aware that I just as easily could have accidentally hurt myself.

I didn’t finish my transition until I was at the Academy. Plenty of medical students there who were willing to perform surgeries off the record. I didn’t really worry about them discovering I was an augment. They were my friends—they knew my parents were ridiculously over-controlling of me, so they understood my need for secrecy and why I had waited so long. My friends also didn’t have any interest in digging into my suspiciously blank medical records, they just wanted to help me out.

So it worked out for me. But. I shouldn’t have had to wait so long to feel like myself. I shouldn’t have had to bear the crushing pressure of my parents’ expectations. I shouldn’t have had to become my own doctor. And I certainly shouldn’t have had to undergo perfectly safe and common medical procedures in such risky and secretive ways!!

I’ve always wondered... if my parents had let me grow up without the enhancements, would they have let me transition when I first asked? Would they have accepted my autonomy and called me by my chosen name instead of the arbitrary one they picked out before they even knew me? Would they have been less obsessively attached to their idealized, incorrect version of me, and more willing to accept who I really am? Would I have gotten the chance to grow up knowing that they loved me no matter what? How different would I be right now, if their love hadn’t always been so conditional on my usefulness, on my achievements, on my conformity and submission to their ideas for my life?

I still can’t believe that they violently took away my bodily autonomy when I was too young to stop them, and then they had the gall to think they did me a favor and gave me a precious gift. Do they not see the double standard in how they felt justified changing me into something I didn’t even want to be and yet they felt outraged that I might want to change something about myself too? They really expected me to cherish only the aspects of myself that never belonged to me.

Does it matter that they did it all out of what they thought was love? Does their alleged “love” for me make their awful treatment of me any better? Or does it make it even worse? I can never decide whether to try to accept that their cruelty came from a place of love so I can forgive them and move on, or stay angry forever about the dire consequences of their love so I can always hold them accountable. Both options are exhausting. Being stuck in the permanent state of deciding between these options is also exhausting.

I know I’ll see you again soon—assuming Miles’ apocalyptic fears of death and destruction don’t come to pass during this routine mission—but we only just left and already I miss you. I get far too introspective and haunted by my past when you’re not here to distract me by picking fights about my interpretations of Shelley or Iloja of Prim. Actually, I could really do with hearing you read some Iloja to me right now.

Maybe Captain Sisko will let you come along next time. It seems to take our team of three communications officers HOURS to decode Dominion transmissions that you could have broken through in minutes.

Love,

Julian <3

*

_[encrypted subspace message from Deep Space Nine]_

_[stardate sent: 49775.1]_

My dearest Julian,

My heart breaks over the way your parents treated you. Knowing that they meant well certainly isn’t enough to absolve them. People do horrible unforgivable things in the name of love all the time—trust me, I would know, having personally done many unforgivable things myself out of my love for the Cardassian Union and her people.

Personally, I never found redemption in the forgiveness of my father. I forgave him, but he could never forgive me. And even though I forgave him (many more times than he deserved), I fear I may always feel just a little bit unresolved.

But just because you have no obligation—and, I maintain, no good _reason_ —to forgive your parents doesn’t mean you need to waste any more of your time being angry at them. Let them be forgotten and ignored. Let yourself be happy for your own sake, rather than to spite your parents. Let your friends be your chosen family. Let me love you unconditionally for the rest of our lives. Please let that be enough.

Come back to me soon, my love. I wasn’t sure which poems in particular you wanted to hear, so I recorded an assortment of my favorites.

-E

_[2 attachments (audio files)]_

_[Attachment 1: READINGS_OF_SAPPY_LOVE_POEMS_BY_ILOJA_OF_PRIM_AS_REQUESTED (00:37:13)]_

_[Attachment 2: SAME_POEMS_BUT_VASTLY_INFERIOR_AS_THEY_HAVE_BEEN_TRANSLATED_INTO_FEDERATION_STANDARD_AND_THEN_MISPRONOUNCED_BY_ME (00:46:04)]_

**Author's Note:**

> Garak already knows about Julian being trans and genetically engineered, they’ve talked about all of that. But Julian hasn’t gone into so much detail about the full horror of his young adulthood before, and he hasn’t let much of his anger towards his parents show until now.
> 
> Title is from one of my favorite songs, [Now or Never Now, by Metric](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7DUOcCgmpU). The rest of the lyric is _and everything that’s under my skin / where I end and begin / still belongs to me_. Idk how applicable the rest of the song is to this fic but this line seemed perfect for the theme of Julian trying to reclaim ownership of his body.
> 
> Thanks to sapphose, thisandthisandthis, and candybaroque for their helpful feedback and brainstorming!


End file.
